Hard Disk keeps turning off

[Jerry Spence1]

I have an Acer Aspire 1710 Laptop. For anyone not familier with this it is
not really a laptop as such. It has a standard IDE drive and a 17" monitor.
A wonderful beast with a Gig of RAM

I am suffering from the disk keep spinning up. Whilst using Word for
instance the PC will often freeze for about 5 seconds and I can hear the
disk spinning up. It then carries on OK for a short time.

Under control panel power options I have "Never Turn Off" for the disk

Under System the disk reports itself as ST120022A. I am starting to wonder
if the disk itself is faulty, although chkdsk doesn't report anything.

 

[Malke]

I have an Acer Aspire 1710 Laptop. For anyone not familier with this
it is not really a laptop as such. It has a standard IDE drive and a
17" monitor. A wonderful beast with a Gig of RAM

I am suffering from the disk keep spinning up. Whilst using Word for
instance the PC will often freeze for about 5 seconds and I can hear
the disk spinning up. It then carries on OK for a short time.

Under control panel power options I have "Never Turn Off" for the disk

Under System the disk reports itself as ST120022A. I am starting to
wonder if the disk itself is faulty, although chkdsk doesn't report
anything.

You need to determine what is making the disk spin up. It could be the
Indexing Service, which you can turn off here:

Start>Run>services.msc [enter]

It could be that your antivirus is scanning your Word documents (if the
problem only happens with Word).

It could be malware.
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

It could be some other process running (see Services as above).

If you want to test the drive, download SeaTools from Seagate. Make a
bootable cd (need third-party burning software) or floppy and boot with
the media. Do a thorough test and if the drive has physical errors,
back up your data and replace it.

Malke

 

[Jerry Spence1]

I have an Acer Aspire 1710 Laptop. For anyone not familier with this
it is not really a laptop as such. It has a standard IDE drive and a
17" monitor. A wonderful beast with a Gig of RAM

I am suffering from the disk keep spinning up. Whilst using Word for
instance the PC will often freeze for about 5 seconds and I can hear
the disk spinning up. It then carries on OK for a short time.

Under control panel power options I have "Never Turn Off" for the disk

Under System the disk reports itself as ST120022A. I am starting to
wonder if the disk itself is faulty, although chkdsk doesn't report
anything.

You need to determine what is making the disk spin up. It could be the
Indexing Service, which you can turn off here:

Start>Run>services.msc [enter]

It could be that your antivirus is scanning your Word documents (if the
problem only happens with Word).

It could be malware.
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

It could be some other process running (see Services as above).

If you want to test the drive, download SeaTools from Seagate. Make a
bootable cd (need third-party burning software) or floppy and boot with
the media. Do a thorough test and if the drive has physical errors,
back up your data and replace it.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

Thanks for your comments. I think what I need to look for is why the disk is
spinning down rather than up. It happens when the PC is idle - I keep
hearing it spinning up. Any activity starts up the disk again. It's as
though the command in System to keep the disk spinning is being ignored.

-Jerry

 

[Malke]

Thanks for your comments. I think what I need to look for is why the
disk is spinning down rather than up. It happens when the PC is idle -
I keep hearing it spinning up. Any activity starts up the disk again.
It's as though the command in System to keep the disk spinning is
being ignored.

Check your power settings. If all looks normal, try swapping out your
power supply for a known-working one and see if that solves the issue.

Malke

 

[Malke]

Check your power settings. If all looks normal, try swapping out your
power supply for a known-working one and see if that solves the issue.

Malke

Sorry for the double post. I just re-read your original post and see you
have a laptop, so you can't easily swap out the psu like I suggested.
I'm sorry. If you can't tie this to a power management issue, maybe
updating the power management software if Acer has any on their
website, then it might be hardware and a call to Acer tech support
would be your next step.

Malke

 

[Jerry Spence1]

Sorry for the double post. I just re-read your original post and see you
have a laptop, so you can't easily swap out the psu like I suggested.
I'm sorry. If you can't tie this to a power management issue, maybe
updating the power management software if Acer has any on their
website, then it might be hardware and a call to Acer tech support
would be your next step.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

Thanks Malke for your suggestions. I will contact Acer.

Regs

-Jerry

 

[Bob I]

You have a look in the BIOS for the power down the drive setting?

Jerry Spence1 wrote:

I have an Acer Aspire 1710 Laptop. For anyone not familier with this
it is not really a laptop as such. It has a standard IDE drive and a
17" monitor. A wonderful beast with a Gig of RAM

I am suffering from the disk keep spinning up. Whilst using Word for
instance the PC will often freeze for about 5 seconds and I can hear
the disk spinning up. It then carries on OK for a short time.

Under control panel power options I have "Never Turn Off" for the disk

Under System the disk reports itself as ST120022A. I am starting to
wonder if the disk itself is faulty, although chkdsk doesn't report
anything.

You need to determine what is making the disk spin up. It could be the
Indexing Service, which you can turn off here:

Start>Run>services.msc [enter]

It could be that your antivirus is scanning your Word documents (if the
problem only happens with Word).

It could be malware.
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

It could be some other process running (see Services as above).

If you want to test the drive, download SeaTools from Seagate. Make a
bootable cd (need third-party burning software) or floppy and boot with
the media. Do a thorough test and if the drive has physical errors,
back up your data and replace it.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

Thanks for your comments. I think what I need to look for is why the disk is
spinning down rather than up. It happens when the PC is idle - I keep
hearing it spinning up. Any activity starts up the disk again. It's as
though the command in System to keep the disk spinning is being ignored.

-Jerry